By Hoda Sherif

On a brisk Saturday morning in February, I sat in the passenger seat of a car as it drove past the St. George Ferry Terminal. The Upper New York Bay River was on my right. To my left, one could find a few tyre shops, a nearly empty Starbucks, and a Halal meat market. We were not far from where, in 1865, the “Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World,” the original name for the now world-famous landmark, was conceived as a gift by French historian Edouard de Laboulaye to honour the United States’ new ideals of democracy. A little further down the road, a highway passed overhead, its traffic thudding. A forty-three-year-old woman, Najla El-Temawi Khass, sat in the driver’s seat; she wore a two-piece beige hijab in the form of a tight headband that pulled her hair back in a protective cocoon, magnifying her finely-chiseled cheekbones. She layered it with a matching brown scarf, and a close-fitting white cap that read “GAZA” in red, green and black. Strands of her dyed honey-brown hair peaked out from underneath. 

Najla sipped on her peach-flavoured bubble tea, one of the few things that offered her a moment’s refreshment throughout her hectic days. With one hand already barely on the wheel, she used the other to sift through the long to-do list on her phone, which was in addition to her fifty-one, and counting, unread chats on WhatsApp. Najla drove with a heavy foot on the gas pedal and manoeuvred the roads with a subtle composure of a multitasking maestro. 

This was Staten Island, where she and her husband Ramy, forty-seven, live with their five children: Najwa, twenty-four; Rola, twenty-three; Khaleel, twenty-one; Nermeen, nineteen; and Ahmed, twelve. 

Najla was born in 1980, in the bijou six-square-kilometer town of Shejaiyya, one of Gaza’s oldest and largest neighbourhoods. This eastern Gazan city is where she lived through the first Intifada (revolution/uprising against Israel) at the age of seven, having experienced nightly raids by Israel’s Occupation Forces, before fleeing to New York in 1988. 

A determined woman with few complaints, the forty-three-year-old has spent every day of her life committed to the fight that is being Palestinian. Summoned frequently by people desperate for care, the activist is often the primary contact for those in her community. She knows what it is like to suffer at the hands of Israel’s occupation, and so she dedicates her time to being the refugee coordinator for Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) Relief; a Muslim organization that seeks to alleviate human suffering by providing services to victims and survivors of disasters and conflict in addition to aiding children escaping from war.

THE MARK OF SURVIVAL

We were headed to meet Omar, a sweet five-year-old boy who had been evacuated from Gaza a week earlier. Omar was shot in the arm by an Israeli soldier while trying to fetch a few drops of water in carts laden with emptied plastic containers for transport. He was to bring this ration of muddy, salty water to his parents from the nearly-dry well near his home in Deir Al-Balah, and it was to last them for an entire week. 

But he never made it back. The gunshot left him paralysed on his left side from the waist up, lying amid debris on an unpaved, sandy road, awaiting some of the few paramedics to transport him to the nearest hospital for treatment. Nearly two agonising hours passed before his parents arrived to retrieve him. During those two hours, Omar’s eyes fixed on the bleak, overcast sky devoid of sunlight, replaced instead by the grey of impending danger and worse still, punctuated by the roar of nearby, scattered airstrikes. As he recalled the torturous memory to Najla, I couldn’t help but think of the confusing gust of thoughts racing through his young mind during those two painstaking hours, frozen precariously at the thin veil separating life and death, before he was whisked away in a desperate race to reach the nearest functioning hospital. 

Amid the ongoing war in Gaza, thousands of innocent young children like Omar find themselves thrust into roles far beyond their years. With the city reduced to rubble burying the bodies of their beloved, Palestinian kids are bravely shouldering the burden of providing sustenance for their families. Among many things, what has become clear throughout the war, is that the international community harbours little value for childhood in Gaza, much less for the civilian population; with the innocence of their youthfulness wholly robbed, the world has left behind an entire generation burdened by unfathomable responsibilities and anguish. With the crushing weight of survival pressing down hard, children are forced into the harrowing task of scavenging for even the smallest scraps of food, all in a desperate bid to shield their families from the relentless spectre of starvation and death.

Just days following the gunshot wound to his arm, Omar was confronted with the devastating loss of his parents to an Israeli airstrike that targeted their home. “They died thirsty,” he said.

Omar’s voice trembles as he shares his tales from the weeks before landing in New York, each word more challenging to articulate than the previous, with the distressing trail of memories a child will never shake. He speaks of drowning in an ocean of guilt and shame, suffocated by the thought of leaving his parents desperate for water in their final moments. The memory clings to his mind like the lasting grip of synthetic resin, a painful reel that replays itself each day akin to the stubborn markers on an age-old clock. I didn’t need to ask him to remember, nor would I have; the agony in his eyes spoke volumes. These emotions, bitter and raw, would weigh down the fragile shoulders of any child, but perhaps even more so, a child from Gaza who has only ever known war. 

FROM DISPLACEMENT TO DISAPPOINTMENT 

Just a few weeks following his parents’ death, Omar journeyed with his aunt across the Rafah border to Egypt and boarded a flight to New York to seek medical treatment for his wound. Separated by a sea of conflict and a city left in ashes, Omar bid farewell to his extended family, wholly uncertain if this would be their final encounter.

The five-year-old now resides with his aunt at a community service shelter, managed by the local non-profit organization which claims to provide refuge for children who have lost limbs or have sustained other severe injuries. Though it quickly became apparent that this was merely a space where the young boy would be increasingly isolated from the broader community, barred from any visitors by the shelter.

As we approached the shelter’s driveway, a dull, two-storey home with a baby blue facade devoid of imagination, came into view. Mustard-coloured doors adorned the residence. Strange women who avoided greetings moved in and out of the entryway while a towering sign, proudly proclaiming, “Dare to Dream” featuring animated children holding hands embellished the front entrance. Nothing screams encouragement to children without limbs and their parents like weather-beaten cliches.

We pressed the doorbell, and a flustered young woman greeted us as she opened the door. Dark circles clung to her eyes like ink stains on parchment while her hands trembled incessantly. She nervously toyed with the hem of her black long-sleeved shirt. Furrowed eyebrows and a tightly clenched jaw revealed the lines of frustration etched across her forehead. Hesitant to come outside, we greeted her at the front entrance. This was khalto (aunt) Maha, Omar’s aunt who had fled Gaza with him and had taken him in as her own, after losing her own two children to the war.

Gaza is a place where the ordinary rhythms of life are corrupted by a seventeen-year-long land, sea and air blockade; it is a place where lives have long been dictated by the omnipresent shadow of a ruthless military occupation; a place where one mourning family finds familial comfort within the warm embrace of another, mindful that the day will likely dawn when tragedy will also visit their doorstep. This has always been the reality of life in Palestine. But following October 7, this shared commitment of embracing orphaned children as one’s own has become an everyday practice. After all in Gaza, everyone is family. They have to be.

Palestinians have long recognised that the currency of life is a rare commodity and that peace is all but a whispered promise reserved for the privileged few. The now looming question in their minds is not one of possibility, but inevitability. Najla recites it perfectly: “It is no longer a matter of how, but when they [her family sheltering in Rafah] will die.”

Having been denied entry into the shelter, Najla and I lingered on the doorstep until Omar mustered the courage to emerge from the safety of his aunt’s protective embrace. He was cloaked in a loose-fitted army puffer and snug blue velvet sweatpants too big for his diminutive legs. The scars of the procedure were evident on his delicate form with his left arm, now bereft from the bullet but nearly immobile, serving as a painful reminder of the ordeal.

Omar donned dark blue Havaianas flip flops and I wondered if his dainty toes felt the crisp chill of the New York winter. Immediately, my eyes caught sight of the ash-grey marks marring the left side of his face, reminiscent of the scars left by an airstrike—the very same that had tragically claimed his parents’ lives. Najla informed me that those marks might remain there for a long while, a testament to her own lived experiences with Israeli soldiers. I imagined how difficult it must be to look at his reflection in the mirror each day, a grim reminder of all that he had lost. 

Throughout our brief stay, Omar remained in tears. In her bid to offer some semblance of comfort, Najla gifted him an iPad, hoping it might serve as a lifeline to his relatives still in Gaza. Yet Omar’s tears persisted, unyielding, even as the device was placed in his small hands. Later, a woman, brimming with anger, demanded our departure. I held Omar tightly as memories flooded my mind of my young cousin whose eyes, too, shared the same deep, soulful shade of dark brown. Long eyelashes framed those round eyes and fluttered, amidst a reservoir of tears, like leaves caught in a winter breeze. Except it wasn’t leaves that decorated his lashes, but the crushing weight of a child yearning for his parents, and for a childhood so cruelly snatched away. 

Najla drove me back to the terminal. During the drive, she voiced her disappointment at her failed hope that Omar would find a measure of peace here away from the hovering fear of bombs dropping overhead. Perhaps, she thought, he would reveal a glimmer of awe at the sight of a world untouched by the relentless flames of war and destruction. Instead, Omar was mostly mute, save for the occasional wail that punctuated his tears.

For children like Omar, who lack the steady embrace of parental figures, the struggle to feel safety and belonging in a world that already feels apathetic to their existence is a lonely journey. Not even Najla, the beloved khalto to all in her tight-knit Palestinian community in Staten Island, could offer him adequate solace, and the weight of that realisation gnawed at her soul. Palestinians are the very essence of each other’s existence. They have to be, after all. They lived in a world where their plight had long been callously disregarded, many aloof to their decades of suffering that led to this moment —  a veiled wound that pierced deeper than any physical affliction ever could.

LIBERTY’S FORGOTTEN PEOPLE

I boarded the ferry amidst a bustling scene of eager tourists, their faces alive with anticipation at the prospect of catching sight of the great Statue of Liberty. It seemed even 136 years on, the statue still retained its status as an essential tourist destination. 

The waves grew stronger beneath, while dusk-lined clouds blanketed the sky, obscuring the sun and draping the horizon like swollen storm masses. Ms. Liberty, who was meant to stand as a resilient symbol of hope and freedom, began swaying with the rhythm of the restless shore, as though the waves beneath her murmured with disappointment.  I wondered about the significance of that monument for the Palestinians escaping war and occupation over the years, chasing the elusive promise of liberty only to be met with haunting reminders of their enduring psychological scars. As it faded into my rearview, I thought about what that statue should mean to kids like Omar who arrive here for medical attention and to seek refuge from the very same land actively participating in the grievous genocide that continues to ravage their own. 

Over the decades, Palestinian resistance has taken on many forms. Perhaps the one engaged in by all is the most humane: to have generations of families survive in the face of terrible, unimaginable and worsening odds. To choose to stay and live in whatever remains of their land, a land that believes the tears of their mourning women water the trees in paradise; to continue to love; to raise their kids in the shatters of their home; to teach their kids, by way of example, that the essence of spirituality lies not in isolation but in our shared humanity; to believe that the dismissal of surrender is not to accept defeat. Palestinians are a people who believe that death isn’t the end. Their unshakable faith in God, in the virtue of resilience, and in a force greater than the entire world itself is a notion so vast that many struggle to fathom it outside the confines of their carnaged borders. But Palestinians know: to maintain a sense of community, of history and their long-standing place within it means to teach life even amidst the rubble of everything that once was.  

As a young Arab, Muslim woman myself, I understood quite well: the American democratic promise of liberty was one never created with kids like Omar or khaltos like Maha in mind; the promise was instead a legacy built on the backs of hundreds of thousands of innocent families in the Middle East and beyond. By definition, democracy must come from within. It cannot be imposed on a society that has remained largely indifferent to the suffering of those in Palestine and of all indigenous communities in their plight for freedom. And time and time again, Palestinians unequivocally remind us that a world without them is a world that accepts oppression, evil and greed. This truth invites those who wish to build a new world to dismantle the meaningless statues that claim to represent democracy erected centuries ago in emblematic cities, along with the systems that work to uphold them, and to stand with Palestine in their one-hundred-year battle for liberation.